State of the Union -- State of the Computer

Although I've been rough on the president these past few months and been really angry at him for Afghanistan in particular, I have to say that the man knows how to give a speech. Would that oratory could move masses or even just Republicans! Mr. Obama gave his first state of the union address tonight, and it was a good speech. As always, the speech was a model of If a president were evaluated on how well he spoke in public, this president would surely rate high. But the key visual for me was the sight of all the Republicans sitting in stony silence and on their hands at about 95 percent of the applause lines. Obama certainly advanced some persuasive reasons that the paralyzing gridlock in Washington ought to be ended, and the sooner the better. Sorry . . . I don't see that happening. I think we're fated to go down the tubes quicker than we would if we had a government of bipartisanship in full cry. The Republicans are willing to pull the temple down over their heads and kill everybody rather than be cooperative. And surely the problems we're facing are only getting worse the longer the damn politicians are more interested in preserving their political skins than in recognizing just what terrible shape we're in.

Best part of the speech to me was Obama excoriating the terrible, just horrendous, decision of the Supreme Court to allow unbridled spending by corporations . . . well, maybe "excoriate" is not the most accurate verb, but whatever it was, it was right in the face of the five justices that made this horrible decision.

Later . . . much later. 

It has taken me hours to get back to this note. Why? Because of all the hassle, bother, and frustration involved with restoring a computer drive. I've been sitting here in front of this computer for untold hours trying to get everything back to as close to it was before, which was optimal.

This is not my first experience with this delightful job. But it is driving me plumb loco this time. Murphy stalks me pretty much whenever I've got to do something like this. I've had everything from install discs that won't work; software serial numbers that won't work; restoration of over 33,000 files from backup service getting stuck--the restore has been going now for almost two days and it's still got over 15,400 more to go, and I never had this kind of problem when I had to do a restore onto a new computer--a wireless printer I cannot get to work wireless (I had to plug it into the computer); at least two hours on the phone with the "restore" people.

My frustration level is high. I'm going to watch the news and drink some wine.